Other issue or reissues: V-Disc Recordings (Collectors' Choice Music, 4510)About the period: During the war the United States itself entered the record business, making hundreds of so-called V-discs for distribution to service bases. Most of these V-discs were standard popular fare by name bands, but a certain amount of jazz was squeezed in as well. At the same time Louis Armstrong was still popular but far from his glorious days of 1920s and 1930s.

The Album: Beginning with a set of V-Discs cut at New York's Metropolitan Opera House on January 18, 1944. The next session is from August of 1944, when Satch cut three sides for Decca in Los Angeles. Backed by his 16-piece orchestra, he sang a couple of pop tunes, including a duet with actress Dorothy Dandridge. Back in New York at the beginning of December 1944, Armstrong cut a couple of sides with the V-Disc All-Stars. One session, held at midnight on December 7, 1944, included an all-star cast, among the musicians Teagarden and Bobby Hackett. According to one story, Armstrong walked into the studio as a surprise visitor when the session was already underway. He joined a mixed bag of musicians to cut his specialty, "Confessin'," and a blues originally issued as "Play Me the Blues," which became part of his standard repertory as "Jack Armstrong Blues." The blues features vocal exchanges between Armstrong, Teagarden, and trombonist Lou McGarity, each exhorting the other to "play me the blues," and consists largely of soloing by the principals. Armstrong plays a half-dozen choruses or more.

His only 1945 studio recordings as a leader, apparently, were two little sides for Decca. And then Esquire magazine provided another jazz context for Armstrong. The magazine had been reporting on jazz fairly regularly for over a decade. In 1943 the editors conceived the idea of a critics' poll of jazz musicians, as a kind of antidote to the Down Beat polls, which jazz fans felt were a travesty. The first poll resulted in a concert of the winners, given at the Metropolitan Opera House on January 18, 1944. Esquire continued its critics' poll through 1947. The first concert was recorded, and the winners of subsequent polls were recorded in various combinations in studios by jazz writer Leonard Feather. Armstrong won four times as a singer but only twice as a trumpet player. "Throughout, Louis parades his showy stuff, frequently on breakneck tunes taken too fast for him. He was at his worst at the Metropolitan Opera concert, flinging about random cliches, straining his way into the upper register, and generally working for cheap effects. He is somewhat better on the formally organized recording sessions: he plays a nice, if familiar, solo on "Snafu," and his opening solo on "Blues for Yesterday" is agreeable, if also familiar. But on the whole, the Esquire cuts show him at or near his worst." says James Lincoln Collier in his critical study of Armstrong's work in An American Genius.

Back to opening track, I still can't believe that Hawk wasn't much keen of Satch, according to his biography, Song of the Hawk. The Armstrong-Hawkins recorded collaboration with the Fletcher Henderson's orchestra, back in 1920s, ended on a low note, but Hawk took many things from Armstrong before his leaving for Chicago, even if he laughed at the drunk Armstrong, throwing up on Henderson, the night before his departure from the band.Anyway the superb opening track, Mop Mop, composed by Hawk himself, is a good sign of dissolving all problems, enmities and difficulties between two giants, as time has passed.As far as other writers comment is concerned, I prefer this one: "A delightful pot-pourri in mostly excellent sound," as been told by Cook-Morton.